Friday, June 1, 2007

Double Duty

When it comes to Linfield head coaches that have delivered National Titles (7 in total) only three coaches have their names attached. For Jackson Vaughan, a 1997 Linfield Grad, he just led his squad to a season for the ages in helping Linfield win our first women’s team National Title.

However as many Linfield faithful know this isn’t the first Linfield team title that Jackson has been involved with. Jackson was the D-Line coach and defensive run coordinator of Linfield’s 2004 National Football Championship squad. Most recently Jackson was elevated to the defensive coordinator roll in 2006 and this upcoming season he will be the guy calling the defensive plays for the ‘Cats.

Jackson’s hometown newspaper, The Baker City Herald, just ran an interview of his double duty and how he was able to build a power out of his softball program. Here are a couple of quotes from the article:

Of his 2007 softball squad: "We had pretty high goals," Vaughan said. "We finished fourth in the nation last year. We were pretty beat up with some people injured, and we were in kind of a ‘just happy to be there' mode.

"But with all the kids we had coming back we had high goals this year," the native of Hereford said. "We tried not to get caught up in the idea of a national title early in the season though. We really preached the one pitch, one game mentality."

In dealing with players: "From coaching football I had learned a lot of the coaching things. I had to learn the little things that make you successful.

"Dealing with players is kind of universal even though there's some difference between dealing with boys and girls. But, if you can motivate kids you can be successful."

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Why "ADvantage Catdome"

I’ve had a number of people ask me why the blog is called ADvantage Catdome. So instead of repeating the explanation over and over, I thought I would just lay it out here.

Back in 1986 my father took me to my very first Linfield game, the final regular season game vs. Pacific (Linfield would roll the Boxers on their way to their 3rd NAIA title). I was 10 years old at the time and I can remember seeing these banners the pep squad/students have hung up on the fences around the Catdome. They read “We have the ADvantage”.

I pulled on my dad’s shirt and asked him what that meant. He pointed to the coaches box in the far back of Memorial stadium and said “You see that man there? That’s Coach Rustchman. He’s Linfield’s advantage.”

It wasn't until later that my dad told me Coach Rustchman’s first name was “Ad”. Get it now? Good. Go ‘Cats!